A small town in Vermont, with only 3,000 full-time inhabitants has put at least one athlete in every Olympic games since 1984, including the highest ever finisher in the ski jump from the US. What are they doing to create such elite athletes? The answer has little to do with sports… Bio Karen Crouse is a

If an athlete’s inner dialogue is made up of the voices they hear most often and most intensely in their daily lives, what are we as parents and coaches saying that can form a champion’s mind? Join us as we talk to Two-time Iowa High School State Basketball Championship winning coach, Nate Sanderson, to discuss

Here at Changing the Game Project, every week we get a call or email that says “remember that article you wrote about…? We want to use it in our newsletter and we can’t find it. What was it called?” Well, after four years of publishing thousands of words a month, we have realized that we

Author of Women in Sports Coaching, Nicole M. LaVoi, Ph.D. is a Senior Lecturer in the area of social and behavioral sciences in the School of Kinesiology at the University of Minnesota where she is also the Co-Director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport, and the co-founder of the

The scouts snickered. They looked at the time again. To this day the 5.28 second 40 yard dash time is one of the slowest for quarterbacks in the history of the NFL combine. His 24.5 inch vertical leap didn’t have them lining up at his door either. He had been a good, but not an

As soon as I stepped out of my car in the parking lot, I could hear it. It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon of travel soccer, but there it was. You know what I’m talking about: that sometimes beautiful, often times excruciating cacophony of sounds that we have come to know as “cheering for our

“Dad, am I a disappointment to you?” My son asked, choking back tears. I stopped dead in my tracks. We were walking out of a local amusement park on our way to the car. We had spent the day at the park to bond. It seems the plan backfired. I gathered myself. Inside I was

(This week’s blog was written by Alecko Eskandarian (@alecko11), former US National Team player and current Assistant Coach of the NY Cosmos of the NASL. This article originally appeared 11/18/16 on the Players Tribune and they have graciously granted us permission to reprint it. We have read many articles about concussions, and this one really

(This article was written by Nate Sanderson and originally appeared on Breakthrough Basketball. Nate is a great friend of Changing The Game Project and coach of the Iowa State Champion Springville Girls Basketball Team. We highly encourage every coach and parent to read this and institute this in your team). For the past 14 years

“How many of you want to be a college athlete?” I asked this question to 3,000 middle school students in Southern California recently. In all, about 1,000 kids raised their hands. “What about an artist? A singer? What about a musician?” Maybe 500 students raised their hands. “What about running a business? Raise your hand

(This weeks blog is written by Todd Beane, Founder of TOVO International. Todd is the co-founder of Cruyff Football and Senior Advisor to the Cruyff Institute, and has consulted for FC Barcelona, Ajax Amsterdam, Chivas Guadalajara, Melbourne City FC, Mamelodi Sundowns, Austrian Football Federation) “We pretty much let the coaches decide what to do with

“I did not know there would be math on this test,” is something I say (jokingly) when I get a difficult question at my speaking engagements. Recently, I received an email from a frantic mom, and it got me thinking about math. Yes, math. When it comes to our current sporting environment, I think we often

By James Leath “When did parenting get to be so stressful?” began a recent post on the Changing the Game Project Facebook page. “I worry that if I don’t provide them with the best equipment, or get them on the best team, or take them to every camp or tournament, then I am letting my

“I don’t know where to turn,” an exasperated dad recently told me after a speaking event. “My son is fast, and he is skilled. We do lots of extra practice, we go to a private skills coach, we are doing everything it takes to get to the next level, but something is not right. He

Back in the summer of 2000, I was just completing my first year as an assistant men’s soccer coach at the University of Vermont. Between sessions of summer camp, I often ducked out of the heat by having lunch in the cool confines of UVM’s famed Gutterson Field House, watching some of the planet’s best

When you run an organization such as the Changing the Game Project, you hear many youth sports stories from parents, coaches, and players. Some stories are absolutely heartbreaking, others inspiring. Recently I encountered the absurd. Many of us have seen the news about a volleyball player from Washington DC who was taking her playing time

The other day I had a conversation with a coaching colleague about the state of youth sports. I stated that the emphasis on travel sports and playing multiple games per day for young children was hurting kids and damaging sports. “I agree with what you are saying,” he said, “but you are forgetting that youth

For the last few days, my email and social media accounts have been lit up by a simple image first shared with me on Twitter by @ohiovarsity. It is amazing because the image portrays something that is widely known among experts, widely discussed in coaching circles, and has certainly been written about by me and

“My daughter is the tallest fourth grader in her class and loves to play basketball,” said a father to me recently. “Sadly, I know that she will ultimately grow to be of average height. Since she is now only allowed to rebound and give the ball to shorter-ball handler players on her team, she will

“What happens to us parents and coaches,” I often get asked, “that turns us from sensible, relaxed people to stressed out adults roaming up and down sports sidelines and screaming at every play?” It is a question I ponder a lot, especially as I often get to watch my young children’s games played side by

Do you turn get on Facebook, or Pinterest, or Instagram, and ever think to yourself “Everyone’s kid has a trophy, won their big game, and is having great success, but mine is not?” Does it drive you nuts when everyone else’s kids seem to be achieving something remarkable, or looking so happy, and you are

When you are in the coaching profession, one of the things you learn early on is not to take things too personally. Your biggest fans when you win may become your biggest critics when you lose. Your players may love you one moment, and grumble the next, and it is important to maintain perspective and

If you put a bunch of top coaches, sport scientists and psychologists in a room together, they may not agree on much. They would agree on one thing though: an overemphasis on winning and competition, instead of practice and development, is detrimental to the long term performance of young athletes. Unfortunately, today in youth sports

When I was a kid, my parents taught me to avoid those bad four letter words we all have heard. You know the ones I mean, the ones that you would first hear in school and then think it was OK to use them at home, until you saw that look on dad’s face! My

On April 26, 2014 I had the honor of presenting a talk at TEDx Bend Oregon entitled “Changing the Game in Youth Sports.” The power of the TED platform, and its international recognition as a brand that brings “ideas worth sharing” to the forefront of conversation, was such an incredible platform to be able to

The greatest difference between our children’s sporting experience and our own is the rise of year round, sport specific organizations that ask – even require – season after season of participation in order to stay in the player development pipeline. The pressure to have your child specialize in a single sport at a young age

“Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. You name them – work, family, health, friends and spirit – and you’re keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But

Now that I get to make my living as a writer and a speaker, I have many perks. Perhaps my favorite is that I get to write off all of my book purchases as a business expense, research for past and future writing! In 2013, I read a ton of great books, but here are

From the Little League World Series to American Idol, we have an unhealthy obsession with “discovering” the next generation of great youth talent in this country. This is especially true when it comes to sports. I am not saying it is bad to identify talent. Our problem lies in how we define talent at the

This past week on our Facebook page, we had a great discussion on how to praise your athletes, so that the praise would be helpful, and not harmful (yes, it can be harmful) to their development. It was really a great discussion, so I wanted to sum it all up for everyone so you had